Volunteers of the Human Rights Humanitarian Mission in Ukraine, who are now working in Kharkiv, report that the number of displaced persons from conflict-hit areas continues to increase.

The website censor.net.ua has published statistics on the number of migrants in different regions of the country, provided by the State Service for Emergency Situations. As of June 15, 881,209 people have moved from the temporarily occupied territory. According to official data, in the Kharkiv region alone, the number of migrants is 173,405 people, of which more than 20,000 are children and nearly 116,000 are people with disabilities and elderly persons. The figures do not include a large number of refugees who refused to register, as they were able to find a job or came to stay with their relatives.

According to the Belarusian volunteers’ Facebook account, one of the major problems for immigrants is getting approval of certificates for displaced persons:

“Here’s a queue in one of the district departments of the Kharkiv Migration Service. Refugees here have their internally displaced person certificates stamped, which they need as much as a passport. The department can serve 100-150 people a day, the last person in the queue is number 2,680, and there are about 800 people ahead of him, and the services only works three days a week... The difficulties with the certificates is one of the most common complaints we hear from the settlers coming from the conflict-hit area.”

On June 14, the mission visited the local memorial to the victims of totalitarianism.

“Here are buried victims of the NKVD: more than 4,000 Polish officers and nearly three thousand Soviet citizens. Among them were Belarusians.”

Belarusian volunteers work together with the organization Station Kharkov. They take part in the distribution of humanitarian aid for displaced persons, and continue interviewing refugees on the efficiency of the local social security service.